My husband Robert Camp has penned a very good diary, IMHO, but unfortunately his account at Daily Kos seems to be broken, and he can't post this here himself. Some excerpts:
The best reason to vote for Obama has nothing to do with policy. There are plenty of policy differences between the candidates – assuming you can find examples of policies that Mitt Romney hasn’t taken contradictory positions on... But policy agreement, though it may be important, is not the best reason to vote for Obama.
But it’s not even the specter of a Romney presidency that presents us with what I consider the best reason to vote for Obama. It’s this: We’ve got a Republican-controlled Congress that has, for four consecutive years, thrown the longest and loudest tantrum in my political memory.
What’s worse is that this tantrum was premeditated, coordinated and executed with the cohesion of a militarized pre-school...
Unfortunately there are no Founding Fathers around anymore to take the Republican Congress out behind the woodshed, so the American electorate has to send an unambiguous message.
The entire text is below the fold...and also
linked here.
The best reason to vote for Obama, or “Wait ’til your Founding Fathers get home!”
My kids, both grown now, were easy to raise. They were even-tempered and well-mannered pretty much right out of the package. Their mother and I don’t take a whole lot of credit for this because, well, the people who know us know better. We just didn’t have that much to do with it.
So it surprised me when, as they eased into their teens, they started demonstrating rather strident reactions to misbehaving children. I don’t think we took much time, except perhaps in their very early days, to manage temper tantrums, and I don’t remember spending a lot of their childhood comparing their behavior to kids who were acting out. It didn’t come up that much. But for some reason they grew to be put off by unruly children, and even more surprising to me, seemed to instinctively understand where to assign the blame.
“I don’t understand why their parents don’t do something about that,” they’d say, “Are they deaf?” I half expected them to rail about sparing the rod and spoiling the child!
Putting aside any potential controversy over disciplinary methods, I think we can all agree that childish fits of temper require parental involvement. Kids writhing on the floor in the middle of the grocery store or making a stink in Toys R Us aren’t really to blame for their conduct. We can all pretty much get behind the notion that their parents need to step up and, using whatever behavior modification techniques they prefer, train that nonsense out of them. It’s pretty obvious that if you don’t address the issue immediately, and tirelessly, you’re going to be paying for it (sometimes literally) for the rest of their childhood.
It is with these observations in mind that I turn to the 2012 Presidential election. I will say up front that I am a liberal. But I have a point to make and it’s not meant only for liberals. Just as my kids needed no political perspective in order to recognize the common sense in short-term effort for long-term gain, I’m confident that independents and conservatives will recognize the same logic underlying my argument.
I want to make a case for what I believe is the best reason to vote for Barack Obama. Now I know I just got done saying my argument goes beyond partisan politics, and I still think it does, but give me a little rope here (who knows, maybe I’ll…well, you know) and I think you’ll see the broader picture.
The best reason to vote for Obama has nothing to do with policy. There are plenty of policy differences between the candidates – assuming you can find examples of policies that Mitt Romney hasn’t taken contradictory positions on (sorry, I’ll be good, I promise). But policy agreement, though it may be important, is not the best reason to vote for Obama.
It’s not even that we don’t want to reward Romney’s, umm, casual relationship with reality (okay, I lied about being good, but the argument is still worth hearing). Yes, he’s had trouble finding his core principles with a flashlight, but he’s not the first candidate to goose the truth a little bit. And frankly I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing for a President to be on the fence on a lot of issues. I like the idea of the leader of the free world not having all of his opinions set in stone. (On the other hand, swinging 180 degrees on something like abortion is perhaps evidence of judgment that never sets up at all.)
But it’s not even the specter of a Romney presidency that presents us with what I consider the best reason to vote for Obama. It’s this: We’ve got a Republican-controlled Congress that has, for four consecutive years, thrown the longest and loudest tantrum in my political memory.
What’s worse is that this tantrum was premeditated, coordinated and executed with the cohesion of a militarized pre-school (now there’s an image that’s going to fester). When Pete Sessions said, “And we need to understand that Insurgency may be required when [dealing with] the other side,” specifically talking about emulating the Taliban, it wasn’t because there was real tyranny to be resisted. He said it because in his mind infidels had just defeated the party of the righteous, and holy dispensation was being denied.
Mitch McConnell didn’t say, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” because of any actual transgression, however minor. He said it because he could not believe Obama had the temerity to win an election.
And Eric Cantor didn’t vow that no Republicans would support the administration’s economic recovery objectives because there was malfeasance to be opposed. He said it, and his congressional cohorts stood with him and McConnell en masse, because holding their collective breath until they turned blue was all that was left to a group for whom putting the public welfare above party politics was not an option.
These are people who, at the drop of a tricorne, will invoke the will of the Founding Fathers in arguing for this bit of historical revisionism or that bit of religious entanglement. Yet somehow they manage to ignore the bits about raising Revenue, regulating Commerce, establishing Post Offices and Roads, promoting the Progress of Science and generally doing the people’s business, when these things are inconvenient to their partisan desires. Of course, they would protest that they’ve been passionately defending the people’s interests by standing on principle (and surely there must be some benighted legislators who truly believe that’s what they were doing). But the people’s interests are manifestly not served by declaring preemptive noncompliance with an administration just duly elected by a large majority of the people. That’s not standing on principle, that’s childish self-indulgence.
Unfortunately there are no Founding Fathers around anymore to take the Republican Congress out behind the woodshed, so the American electorate has to send an unambiguous message. Liberals, of course, will likely need little urging to do so, but it’s also in the direct interests of conservatives and independents. Consider what will happen in the Houses of the future if this behavior is rewarded. Is there any doubt that Democrats will note the success of term-long hissy fits and follow suit when it serves their needs? Is there any chance that this strategy, if paid off with a prize like the presidency, will not become legislative de rigeur? What fortunes will meet our country’s future if adolescent intransigence dogs the steps of those who would follow through on their elective responsibilities?
This is political depravity that goes beyond relentless lobbying or nasty campaigning. This is about a future in which politicians from either side are willing to fold their arms against their chest and sacrifice the welfare of the country until someone gets them a puppy. It’s our obligation to deal with this behavior now, before we end up paying for it for many years to come (you just know we’ll be the ones who have to walk and feed the thing). Heck, my kids understood this concept when they were barely into their teens.
We don’t have a rod to use or spare. All we’ve got is our vote.